The Tropical Fruit Forum

The only guava I know of with leaves like that, and red interstem, is Cas guava. It's a real looker, whatever it is.

The "caatinga" is definitely of the Guineense complex, rounded leaves. Not veiny.

Looking good Mike! Those little leaf varieties have been slow going for me too, I have a few from David, but they're doing ok now that it has warmed up and it's Spring(ish) here. 39f last night though, and they're outdoors. :|

I'll get some more photos of the guava gang today

Do you know which guineense you have K-rimes?

Don't know, but these are big yellow fruit, and fruit in bunches, which matches up with "Caatinga". I also have a "morango" guineense that is doing pretty well in a 5g, it may fruit this Fall, and then I got that pack of seedlings from David too - but many died due to fungal issues in my greenhouse. I only have I think 3 guineense varieties from that batch that survived winter. I know Caatinga is one of them. I would happily have another, great fruit.

It was interesting visiting Kelly recently, many of his guavas he said tasted bad are ones I like. His striatulum was awful, he said, mine is pretty pleasant. I have punishing winters which also is not great for guava ripening... Dunno. The Guineense is great for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it's continuing to flower and Nate reports it flowers and produces almost all year. This is crucial for me with zone pushing location cause it'll get the heat it needs to ripen properly.

Myrtoides sucks!


Guineense IS AWESOME

Quote from: sc4001992 on January 02, 2024, 11:07:40 AM

My seedling white sapote trees all fruited in 5-10 years by letting the central leader/trunk grow without being topped off.

I wish I read this sooner, my seedling got taller than me and was looking lanky and ungly so I did the deed I hope I will get to taste it in my lifetime.

Don't think it'll make a big difference. You'll get fruit. Them being super lanky and tall is really common.

My harshest planting area on the property, soil is paper thin, maybe 4-6" deep above sandstone. At the top, a ice cream bean, middle pakistani mulberry, bottom black pom. I rarely water here, they do ok at best.


Fig forest is starting to fill in, and I have a good number of breba crop, so that's exciting.


Up potted this campo ramon jabo seedling that is probably about 4 years old now. Really stunning flush of red.


Panche tiger and an LSU purp, with a newly planted coffee cake persimmon that I added some chocolate to for some cross pollination. No takes on the chocs yet


A bunch of NZ variety feijoa are looking good, it's mostly topworked now with: white goose, mammoth, anatoki, wiki tu, improved coolidge, nikita, nazemetz,


Sabara rootstock, grimal interstem, paulista, restinga, zona de mata, navel, malacacheta jabo cocktail


Sabara about to blow up with new growth, it has put on some good weight in the half tote


Santa rosa plum left, peruvian apple cactus middle (yuzu lime tucked behind it), orange guava at the top, guabiju tucked below that, flavor king right, a lucuma and calycina are in the soil to the right


Breba on LSU something or other


This is the first year I've seen mushrooms in my soil. It's the second year I've mulched really heavily. When I first started working this area, it was pure sand, no loam at all.


Nice mycorrhizal growth in the mulch


White mulberry loaded up. Last year the entire crop was moulded out by late rain


Stenocereus queretaroensis in the ground. I have a row of cacti here, not all shown, but opuntia: apricot glory, st rosa, papaya and a few PCH selections. I will probably put all my queretaroensis in ground here, have another 4 or 5 plants.


My greenhouse was hit by some serious fungal issues and I have had to empty it. I need to rebuild it, clean and sterilize it, and figure out a sealing solution. My landlord's downspout dumps out right into the side of it, so it flooded a bunch this rainy winter

It has been an aberrant El Nino which usually creates droughts in Eastern and Northern Australia and was predicted to do so. The reverse was true.

La Niña is supposed to be dry and cold in CA and we got blasted with rain last year. El Niño is supposed to be warm and wet and we also got blasted this year in CA. I don't know if whichever one of these we're in is a consistent predictor of rain, and gone are the years of it being supposedly 4 years of one and 4 years of another. My late landlord who lived on the property for 60 years mentioned that things were drastically and permanently different from when she first moved in: it used to rain a lot more, it was never 110+, and there were annual hard frosts. I wonder what she would think of the last few years, had she still been with us. I was expecting the well to run dry during our drought period and now the water table is up 30'...

Australia seems to ping pong between record drought and record flood. I recall almost a decade of drought there or something in the news, then absolutely mind blowing floods to follow.

I am quite curious to see how the hurricane season stacks up in the Atlantic with such warm water conditions this year, apparently will be a doozy.

It is somewhat covered here in North America, if you read stuff about the environment, but it's not really covered in the mainstream media. Politics sells better, unfortunately. I have many friends throughout Brazil and they all report that things aren't normal, but this is the same story across the entire world.

Quote from: K-Rimes on April 05, 2024, 10:28:54 PM

Tell them to visit the farmers market. There is a seller with good quality cherimoya, maybe white sapote, and some guava.

You could send them my way and they can grab some almost ripe skittles guava for the seeds.

Not a whole lot in season yet

I can't find any info on a skittles guava. Can you tell me more about it?

It is one of the varieties that Marcos Gugliemetti sells on here. Either "araza banana" or "araza banana" or "araza morango". It really does taste like Skittles candy. It is some hybrid of guineense, but much smaller. Fruits prolifically, or at least one of them I have does, the other flowered strong last year but didn't hold any fruit. I'll put them side by side this time for cross pollination.

For me winners are: involucrata, uniflora, brasilensis, candolleana. Lots of other positive reviews on the newer stuff. You can keep them small and productive, and with a paint brush handle or two, you can get cross pollination off one plant.

If I had to pick just one it would be uniflora or involucrata.

I think there's one of these, or something related to it at my office. I'll get a photo. It has some fruitlet looking things. I always bring in weird fruits, and I guess the accountant was inspired and ate a bunch of this "fruit" and got sick 

The only green sapotes I've tried have been seedlings. They work. As does Lucuma.

I don't see the point of Mamey anywhere south of LA. Fruit sits on the tree for nearly a year. Needs warmth that entire time. I have a mamey seedling I donated to the local community garden in SB, but it's right by the beach, solid 10a south facing with good drainage. It's been there a year doing fine.

All the sapotes I tried were in pots, in my greenhouse, which never goes below 37f, but yeah, they'd just get too cold and wet and languish, losing a few inches per year, then die.

Green sapote and lucuma seem to be the only reasonable sapote candidates for CA, imo, unless you're down in SD.